The latest Q3 2009 smartphone market figures from Canalys show RIM and Apple gobbling up the smartphone market as overall growth in the segment begins to slow.

The global smartphone market grew just 4% over the previous year ago quarter, a major slowdown from last year's 27.9% expansion over Q3 2007.

"While growth has undoubtedly slowed, it is still outperforming the overall mobile phone market by some margin, as well as driving data revenue for operators," Canalys analyst Pete Cunningham said in a statement, which also noted that sales mobile phones as a whole actually shrank by 4 to 6%.

Canalys' press release only cited market share percentages for hardware vendors and software platforms, so AppleInsider did the math to chart the changes in smartphones over the last two years. The results were stunning, and contradict conventional pundit wisdom on where the industry is heading.

A reversal on expectations

Nearly all market forecasters have insisted that integrated hardware and software platforms like RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone can only possibly be temporary successes that will have to make way for licensed software platforms, where one company or open source group develops software and reference designs that a variety of hardware makers can purchase or use for free.

For example, Gartner recently predicted in a widely publicized report that three years from now it expected to see Symbian slipping only a few percentage points to maintain its lead as the most widely used smartphone operating system. This prediction comes despite the fact that Nokia, by far the largest user of Symbian, has already started seeing its share of smartphones drop rapidly, and that the company is earnestly working to invest in alternatives to Symbian, including its Maemo Linux platform.

On the the other end of the scale, Gartner predicted massive 400% growth for Android and 70-80% market share growth for Windows Mobile, while assuming that the iPhone wouldn't grow its market share at all and that RIM would lose half of its share by 2012.

Most other pundits have predicted a similar shift from integrated platforms (Apple's Mac model) to licensed platforms (the Microsoft Windows model), nearly always citing the shift from the fledgling computer market dominated by Apple and similar integrated companies in the 70s to the DOS and Windows PC monoculture that began to flourish in the 80s and 90s.

What the last three years' smartphone numbers actually show is a shrinking on the top and the bottom of licensed platforms, with growth coming from integrated platforms in the middle.

The Symbian monoculture is rapidly shrinking, shown in the blue segments. Apple and RIM, depicted in yellow and green in the pie charts, are both expanding dramatically. Meanwhile, the "other" manufacturers and licensed platforms outside of the top three are all shrinking away as well.

A short list of winners

This type of consolidation in the smartphone industry is the opposite of what everyone has been predicting, but is inline with the historical timeline of other consumer product categories. Examples include music players (a market first dominated by Sony's Walkman and then by Apple's iPod, where efforts to introduce PlaysForSure as a licensed platform simply failed) and video games (long dominated by Nintendo and usually only one or two other significant rivals at a time.)

Many attempts to introduce a new integrated platform into a mature market have fallen flat, both in PCs outside of the Macintosh (something discovered by Amiga, Atari, NeXT, BeOS, and others) and in MP3 players (like the Zune) and even smartphones (there does not seem to be much global market potential for the Palm Pre).

Similarly, attempts to duplicate the business model of Windows PCs haven't worked out well in many places, even for Microsoft. Symbian, which has long been the "Windows of smartphones" outside of the US simply because there weren't many viable global competitors, is now abdicating the throne. But of all the alternative licensed platforms hoping to take its place, from the commercial Windows Mobile to free options including Google's Android and various other platforms built on top of Linux, none are making much progress. Outside of the top three platforms (Symbian, RIM, Apple), "everything else" has shrunk from 20% of the market a year ago to just 15% now.

Rather than eating into RIM and Apple's integrated platform sales, Android appears largely to have cannibalized the use of other free Linux minority platforms and taken the lunch away from Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

The largest backers of Android are HTC (which actually lost market share as its former sales growth plateaued over the last year) and Motorola, which is in such bad shape that it has fallen from Canalys's top five and joined the "other" pool without so much as even creating a ripple.

Again, from a manufacturer perspective, outside of the top three makers (Nokia, RIM, Apple), "everything else" has fallen from 28% to 21% in just a year. This makes it essential for rival phone makers to distract from the smartphone market and talk about the vast numbers of low margin simple phones being sold. However, as that larger market continues to shrink, this will become increasingly difficult to do.

There is something to be said about a well executed platform with multiple vendors. There is clearly a market for it. But again, it has to be well executed. Motorola badly needs Android to succeed. The bloodletting in the once premier cell phone maker is so apparent by these numbers. My first cell phone was a Moto but it's going to take a tsunami now to pry me away from my iPhone.

Symbian's huge loss of share points between 2007 and 2008 would make any company stand up and take notice. I also expect this is why Nokia is going after Apple in court right now. But there's no excuse for the shape that Windows Mobile is in. Microsoft literally sat on their butts and paid no attention to getting any modern technology out the door to remain competitive. Even worse, Apple gave them a six month head start when the iPhone was announced in Jan. 2007 and here it is, the end of 2009 and their iPhone killer OS still hasn't seen the light of day. Of all of the vendors who had the resources (people, deep pockets, technology) to put out an iPhone killer, it's Microsoft. No wonder their vendor partners (Moto, HTC, Palm) are moving on to Android and WebOS. Completely inexcusable.

Well it should do well considering the amount of hardware support it will receive. The Symbian figures should be proof of that.

Symbian has historically been Nokia, with some Sony Ericsson phones, NTT DoCoMo in Japan and a lot of tiny vendors. So no, it really doesn't portend vast potential for Android, unless Nokia itself picked up Android, which it has zero interest in doing, as this would simply give Google all of Nokia's potential business and control over user market data.

And since Android currently offers nothing but pundit buzz (no software base, no great technical sophistication, no user demand), Nokia could build its own future platform from Maemo or Symbian^2 and keep all that. Which is why that's exactly what the company is doing.

From: http://www.themistermen.co.uk/mr_men....html?wrong/mr
Mr Wrong hasn't got a clue what he is doing ever, and he never gets anything right. Everything turns out WRONG! Everything about his life is a shambles until one day Mr Wrong meets Mr Right, someone who looks exactly like Mr Wrong, but is exactly his opposite.

I'm not predicting anything momentous but merely stating it should do well. We'll leave Ballmer to make predictions but Apple had 3% + market share when it set out in 2007 which is where Android is starting at now. Google also have Chrome OS and i'd put my money on that over Nokia's Maemo any day of the week.

Still we'll see in the fullness of time.

A reputation is not built upon the restful domain of one's comfort zone; it is made out of stalwart exposition of your core beliefs, for all challenges to disprove them as irrelevant hubris.- Berp...

There is something to be said about a well executed platform with multiple vendors. There is clearly a market for it. But again, it has to be well executed. Motorola badly needs Android to succeed. The bloodletting in the once premier cell phone maker is so apparent by these numbers. My first cell phone was a Moto but it's going to take a tsunami now to pry me away from my iPhone.

I could only take 1 year of horrible AT&T service with the iPhone and recently switched to an HTC Hero through Sprint. Honestly, the Hero is a decent device but not in the same class as the iPhone. It's not any one thing, but the overall feel of the Android OS isn't as clean or polished as the iPhone. Of course this will improve over time, but so will Apple.

If the iPhone was available on Sprint or Verizon I'd be buying a new iPhone immediately and saying goodbye to Android.

"Most expensive phone" - SB is really thinking, wow, if only MS could sell premium products in high volume
"I like our strategy, I like it alot" - SB is really thinking, oh dear, I'm on borrowed time. Once the shareholders see a falling market share, they'll demand I leave my post.

"Doesn't appeal to business,because it doesn't have a keyboard which doesn't make it an email machine" - SB really thinking, oh, the on screen touch keyboard is easier to use that cramped buttons. This machine is going to be really easy to use for emails. Wonder if I get one, will I be able to hide it well.

"we are selling millions and millions and millions of phones per year, Apple are selling zero phones per year". SB really thinking, oh dear by 2011 we'll be dead in the water with Apple selling millions of phones and MS selling zero".

"we took 25% of the high end of the [MP3] market": really!?!

Message to MS shareholders: Time is ticking, you need to decide whether this guy is a time bomb waiting to explode your investment. Maybe time to look for a new leader!

I would just like to suggest to the AI staff member who had their 3rd or 4th grade child write this article, that maybe next time they write an article based on "Canalys," that they should probably mention to their readers who or what "Canalys" is. Preferably in the first paragraph.

"Most expensive phone" - SB is really thinking, wow, if only MS could sell premium products in high volume
"I like our strategy, I like it alot" - SB is really thinking, oh dear, I'm on borrowed time. Once the shareholders see a falling market share, they'll demand I leave my post.

"Doesn't appeal to business,because it doesn't have a keyboard which doesn't make it an email machine" - SB really thinking, oh, the on screen touch keyboard is easier to use that cramped buttons. This machine is going to be really easy to use for emails. Wonder if I get one, will I be able to hide it well.

"we are selling millions and millions and millions of phones per year, Apple are selling zero phones per year". SB really thinking, oh dear by 2011 we'll be dead in the water with Apple selling millions of phones and MS selling zero".

"we took 25% of the high end of the [MP3] market": really!?!

Message to MS shareholders: Time is ticking, you need to decide whether this guy is a time bomb waiting to explode your investment. Maybe time to look for a new leader!

"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, April 30, 2007

So what --- he was talking about $600 iphone with a 2 year contract that is simlocked with revenue sharing.

Circumstances change.

Apple bulls like Munster saying 45 million iphones in 2009 --- he is a genius. Apple bears saying 25 million in 2009 --- apple fanbois with pitchforks chanting death threats. You know what? Munster lowered his estimates back down to 25 million iphones a few months ago.

And since Android currently offers nothing but pundit buzz (no software base, no great technical sophistication, no user demand), Nokia could build its own future platform from Maemo or Symbian^2 and keep all that. Which is why that's exactly what the company is doing.

Android has over 10k apps, a maturing SDK, OS and user-base. Its also free, mostly open and modern. The Ovi store looks like a failure and Symbian is too legacy to compete well with the higher-end smartphones.

I think Android-based devices will gain in popularity with v2.0 as it picks up the lower-end and mid-range of that market for all vendors and higher-end for non-AT&T customers in the US, while Apple cleans up the upper end of the consumer devices.

I wonder if Nokias best chance to save itself from falling marketshare and, more importantly, profit is to buy Palm or license WebOS. Its a solid OS with room to grow, but Palm is fraking it up in many way. One is their very poor idea of an SDK.

RiM will still dominate as they have a very solid product, but they keep going cheaper and cheaper with the handsets while the need for BES and services, which is the bulk of their revenue, keeps falling with so many mobile OSes licensing ActiveSync. They need a new plan if they want to maintain their corporate dominance in the foreseeable. If the iPhone and Android fix some glaring corporate-related usage problems itll be a fast fall for BBs.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

I could only take 1 year of horrible AT&T service with the iPhone and recently switched to an HTC Hero through Sprint. Honestly, the Hero is a decent device but not in the same class as the iPhone. It's not any one thing, but the overall feel of the Android OS isn't as clean or polished as the iPhone. Of course this will improve over time, but so will Apple.

If the iPhone was available on Sprint or Verizon I'd be buying a new iPhone immediately and saying goodbye to Android.

If you are THAT pissed over the AT&T service why not Jailbreak your phone and stick it on any carrier you damn well want?

Why is it that all you ever hear about it how bad AT&T are but never "...and since i jail broke my phone and switched to Verizon i've realised that i was nothing more than an AT&T hating sheep and ALL cell companies will have issues, Just there are more people on AT&T and Apple web forums that like to bitch about it".

Seriously if you "loved" your iphone so much to trade it in for a Hero why wouldn't you have looked at the alternatives first. Or was it easier to jump ship first and then bitch about it later?

So what --- he was talking about $600 iphone with a 2 year contract that is simlocked with revenue sharing.

Circumstances change.

Apple bulls like Munster saying 45 million iphones in 2009 --- he is a genius. Apple bears saying 25 million in 2009 --- apple fanbois with pitchforks chanting death threats. You know what? Munster lowered his estimates back down to 25 million iphones a few months ago.

I rather prefer these people be realistic.

He later stated that Apple needs to licensed the OS if they want to get marketshare. Im sure that in his mind that had more to do with it. The iPhone costs $100 more retail for the highest end, but I get your point on the short lived profit-sharing model. I wish they wouldnt have dropped it; another great consumer-focused idea bites the dust.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

If you are THAT pissed over the AT&T service why not Jailbreak your phone and stick it on any carrier you damn well want?

Or quite AT&T within the first 30 days per the agreement. I tested the crap out of my iPhone when I went to AT&T after vowing never to go back to Cingular. Made sure this was going to be a service provider I could live with. I guess if people did that, then theyd have one less thing to bitch about and we cant have that, now can we.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Android has over 10k apps, a maturing SDK, OS and user-base. Its also free, mostly open and modern. The Ovi store looks like a failure and Symbian is too legacy to compete well with the higher-end smartphones.

What makes the Ovi Store look like a failure? Have Nokia released any numbers yet? Nokia don't tend to shout out about successes in the same way that American companies do. It's hard to say whether it's a success or failure, unless I've missed something.

I also don't understand many people on the Internet describe Symbian as "too legacy". Let's not forget that the kernel in iPhone OS and Android are far older. The application and UI situation is pretty appalling at the moment but the replacement coming in Symbian^4, Qt, is thoroughly modern. The OS is also free and open.

Nokia's S40 is still going strong despite years of people saying that it's dead. Symbian won't be going anywhere for a long time.

So what --- he was talking about $600 iphone with a 2 year contract that is simlocked with revenue sharing.

Circumstances change.

Apple bulls like Munster saying 45 million iphones in 2009 --- he is a genius. Apple bears saying 25 million in 2009 --- apple fanbois with pitchforks chanting death threats. You know what? Munster lowered his estimates back down to 25 million iphones a few months ago.

I rather prefer these people be realistic.

The iPhone at $600 sold very well. At lower prices, it sold even better. either way, it was a clear success.

So what --- he was talking about $600 iphone with a 2 year contract that is simlocked with revenue sharing.

Circumstances change.

Apple bulls like Munster saying 45 million iphones in 2009 --- he is a genius. Apple bears saying 25 million in 2009 --- apple fanbois with pitchforks chanting death threats. You know what? Munster lowered his estimates back down to 25 million iphones a few months ago.

I rather prefer these people be realistic.

If we didn't have a major recession, a lot of things would have sold much better. Apple would have sold 25% more computers this year. Who knows how many phones might have been sold, though I had thought 35 million for 2009 would have been possible.

Android has over 10k apps, a maturing SDK, OS and user-base. Its also free, mostly open and modern. The Ovi store looks like a failure and Symbian is too legacy to compete well with the higher-end smartphones.

I think Android-based devices will gain in popularity with v2.0 as it picks up the lower-end and mid-range of that market for all vendors and higher-end for non-AT&T customers in the US, while Apple cleans up the upper end of the consumer devices.

I wonder if Nokias best chance to save itself from falling marketshare and, more importantly, profit is to buy Palm or license WebOS. Its a solid OS with room to grow, but Palm is fraking it up in many way. One is their very poor idea of an SDK.

RiM will still dominate as they have a very solid product, but they keep going cheaper and cheaper with the handsets while the need for BES and services, which is the bulk of their revenue, keeps falling with so many mobile OSes licensing ActiveSync. They need a new plan if they want to maintain their corporate dominance in the foreseeable. If the iPhone and Android fix some glaring corporate-related usage problems itll be a fast fall for BBs.

I'm convinced that the market is too difficult to predict right now.

There will be a shakeout to be sure, but exactly who will be left at the top three or four positions is difficult to see. We can see three, but the forth is a question.

What makes the Ovi Store look like a failure? Have Nokia released any numbers yet? Nokia don't tend to shout out about successes in the same way that American companies do. It's hard to say whether it's a success or failure, unless I've missed something.

I also don't understand many people on the Internet describe Symbian as "too legacy". Let's not forget that the kernel in iPhone OS and Android are far older. The application and UI situation is pretty appalling at the moment but the replacement coming in Symbian^4, Qt, is thoroughly modern. The OS is also free and open.

Nokia's S40 is still going strong despite years of people saying that it's dead. Symbian won't be going anywhere for a long time.

It isn't that it's legacy. It's that the OS wasn't designed for a smartphone. It's a realtime OS, as most phone OS's are. But it's a simple OS that has had feature after feature piled on. It wasn't written for touch, It wasn't written for capacitive screens. It wasn't written for multitouch. It wasn't written for 3D graphics etc.

The OS is weighted down by all this bolted on stuff, and is creaky and slow because of it. It also isn't reliable anymore. That's why Nokia is backing Meamo. I said, two years ago, that Nokia would leave Symbian for something else. They had no choice.

What makes the Ovi Store look like a failure? Have Nokia released any numbers yet? Nokia don't tend to shout out about successes in the same way that American companies do. It's hard to say whether it's a success or failure, unless I've missed something.

I also don't understand many people on the Internet describe Symbian as "too legacy". Let's not forget that the kernel in iPhone OS and Android are far older. The application and UI situation is pretty appalling at the moment but the replacement coming in Symbian^4, Qt, is thoroughly modern. The OS is also free and open.

Nokia's S40 is still going strong despite years of people saying that it's dead. Symbian won't be going anywhere for a long time.

I got my info from reading reviews and getting a first hand account of the store from a Nokia fan who I thought would have had plenty of nice things to say about it. I don’t recall his saying even one positive remark about it. Note, I’m not referring at all to the dead-in-the-water initial start of the store due to overwhelming network access.

iPhone OS might be based off much older code, but it’s modern. Is WebOS old too because it’s based on HTML? Symbian and other mobile OSes were initially designed for much slower and weaker hardware. They have inherent limitations because of this which prevent them from evolving as quickly and effectively as others. Revamping it to take advantage of new technologies may prove to be a waste of time and money. It might be better for them to start with a new OS, like Palm did when they went with WebOS and like Apple did when they went with NeXTSTEP.

Apple’s work shrinking Mac OS X to iPhone OS X makes it very future-forward. Android is versatile, but there are many aspect of Android that will take years to compete with Apple’s core APIs. Does Nokia even have a good browser for Symbian yet? I know they have ported Fennec (mobile Firefox) to Maemo, but what about Symbian? This is a key feature in today’s smartphone market.

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

If you are THAT pissed over the AT&T service why not Jailbreak your phone and stick it on any carrier you damn well want?

Why is it that all you ever hear about it how bad AT&T are but never "...and since i jail broke my phone and switched to Verizon i've realised that i was nothing more than an AT&T hating sheep and ALL cell companies will have issues, Just there are more people on AT&T and Apple web forums that like to bitch about it".

Seriously if you "loved" your iphone so much to trade it in for a Hero why wouldn't you have looked at the alternatives first. Or was it easier to jump ship first and then bitch about it later?

Jailbreaking my phone allows me to use T-Mobile, not Verizon or Sprint. Unlike the rest of the modern world, we have 2 different phone standards here. If you were here in America, perhaps you would understand. AT&T works great for some people and that's fine. For me, I couldn't justify paying a $50/month premium for sub-par cell coverage where I live and work and travel. Sprint is far from perfect but in my situation they are much better than AT&T.

Oh, I also still have the iPhone and use it daily, just not as a phone.

So what --- he was talking about $600 iphone with a 2 year contract that is simlocked with revenue sharing.

Circumstances change.

Apple bulls like Munster saying 45 million iphones in 2009 --- he is a genius. Apple bears saying 25 million in 2009 --- apple fanbois with pitchforks chanting death threats. You know what? Munster lowered his estimates back down to 25 million iphones a few months ago.

the global smartphone market is a balkanized mess. all the different telcos and local preferences. no one product, company, or OS can possibly dominate it. so Nokia has nowhere to go but down as all the new competition comes on line. and most of Nokia's "smartphones" aren't really very smart - including them all in these stats is debatable.

with a premium product and integrated/independent global consumer ecosystem (which no one else has) Apple will be able to command high prices and hold a solid chunk of the market. if the chart measured market share by hardware sale revenue instead of units sold (it should show that too to be done right), Apple would probably be in second place already. if the pseudo Nokia smartphones were not included, it could be in first.

the one thing that is for sure is that Android 2.0 is about to truly "kill" Win Mobile 6.5. as soon as the new Android phones are available from all telcos WinMo sales will collapse. by February they will be giving them away for $25 plus a contract. just watch.

the global smartphone market is a balkanized mess. all the different telcos and local preferences. no one product, company, or OS can possibly dominate it. so Nokia has nowhere to go but down as all the new competition comes on line. and most of Nokia's "smartphones" aren't really very smart - including them all in these stats is debatable.

with a premium product and integrated/independent global consumer ecosystem (which no one else has) Apple will be able to command high prices and hold a solid chunk of the market. if the chart measured market share by hardware sale revenue instead of units sold (it should show that too to be done right), Apple would probably be in second place already. if the pseudo Nokia smartphones were not included, it could be in first.

the one thing that is for sure is that Android 2.0 is about to truly "kill" Win Mobile 6.5. as soon as the new Android phones are available from all telcos WinMo sales will collapse. by February they will be giving them away for $25 plus a contract. just watch.

You make a well reasoned argument, but there are some points I would disagree with. First of all, I think Nokia smartphones deserve to be in the mix. While the smartphone market has changed since the arrival of the iPhone, I dont think they should be counted out. Perhaps, as you suggest, a smartphone market segment demarkation that includes certain hardware and/or OS software. For example, Cortex-A8, more than 128MB RAM, more than 8GB on-board NAND, and/or a browser than that can pass Acid2 test? <==Question mark as they were coming off the top of my head.

I think well see with smartphones what he saw with the PC and OS market into the 1980s: a dying off of mobile OSes in favour for newer, better ones that offer a failing vendor or one hitting a wall a chance to survive. I agree that Android is a likely candidate for that low to mid-end smartphones.

I think WebOS is widlcard as it depends if Palm can make some good choices with a potentially decent mobile OS. Like getting a good SDK or licensing or selling their OS to another vendor. WinMo has no shot. There is very little benefit it has over other mobile OSes. Is ActiveX something companies worry about on the mobile front?

For the first part of 2009before the 3GS had barely got onto shelvesApple is reported to have commanded 32% of global phone profits. That isnt just the US or just smartphone sales, but all sales worldwide. Now take this with a grain of salt because I dont know if they arent able to count certain markets, but it looks like the iPhone in less under 2 years on the market and with their 2nd device already have the number one position in operating profits and number three position in revenue, behind Nokia and Samsung. If true, I wonder what happens after the 3GS sales are accounted for?

Its too bad do WebKit proud. I dont know how old the WebKit or JavaScript engine they used is, but its bloody awful from every aspect. I dont think they are even going to port Fennec to Symbian. Are they going to let it rot in simple phone hell?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

You make a well reasoned argument, but there are some points I would disagree with. First of all, I think Nokia smartphones deserve to be in the mix. While the smartphone market has changed since the arrival of the iPhone, I dont think they should be counted out. Perhaps, as you suggest, a smartphone market segment demarkation that includes certain hardware and/or OS software. For example, Cortex-A8, more than 128MB RAM, more than 8GB on-board NAND, and/or a browser than that can pass Acid2 test? <==Question mark as they were coming off the top of my head.

I think well see with smartphones what he saw with the PC and OS market into the 1980s: a dying off of mobile OSes in favour for newer, better ones that offer a failing vendor or one hitting a wall a chance to survive. I agree that Android is a likely candidate for that low to mid-end smartphones.

I think WebOS is widlcard as it depends if Palm can make some good choices with a potentially decent mobile OS. Like getting a good SDK or licensing or selling their OS to another vendor. WinMo has no shot. There is very little benefit it has over other mobile OSes. Is ActiveX something companies worry about on the mobile front?

For the first part of 2009before the 3GS had barely got onto shelvesApple is reported to have commanded 32% of global phone profits. That isnt just the US or just smartphone sales, but all sales worldwide. Now take this with a grain of salt because I dont know if they arent able to count certain markets, but it looks like the iPhone in less under 2 years on the market and with their 2nd device already have the number one position in operating profits and number three position in revenue, behind Nokia and Samsung. If true, I wonder what happens after the 3GS sales are accounted for?

One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?

You might remember that when the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs emphatically stated that it WASN'T a smartphone, though many were calling it one. I agreed with his statement, because of the lack of third party software, which seems to be one of the minimum specs for one.

But even some "feature phones can download some games and other limited programs. So where exactly is the dividing line?

Does the manufacture decide? Do reviewers? Do the rating services?

WebOs, despite its good points, is dependent on Palm phones. Will anyone ever license it? Why would they, when a free OS is available. Several, actually, all based on some Linux distro. Palm phones don't seem to be exciting many people.